From our President

Sunday, July 31, 2011

The Cary Institute is abuzz with summer activity. Field assistants and students from across the country have joined our ranks for long days of research in the streams, forests, fields, and wetlands that make up our 2,000-acre campus.

Earlier this year, the Institute received a five-year renewal of its Research Experience for Undergraduates program. This National Science Foundation–funded effort provides students with hands-on research experiences, which so often lead to a life-long career in science. Our REU program has been active for nearly 25 years, and many of our graduates are positioned at the frontlines of ecology.

I hope you have been able to attend one of our public programs. They are part of the Cary Institute’s growing emphasis on translating science to citizens. Recent highlights have included talks by Cary Institute scientist Peter Groffman, Natural Resources Defense Council president Frances Beinecke, environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, and Duke University scientist Rob Jackson. Summer lectures will feature climatologist Michael Mann and Nature Conservancy chief scientist Peter Kareiva.

Through our public lecture series and Science and Management Forums, which you can learn more about on page 3, the Cary Institute seeks to alert the Hudson Valley community to the environmental problems facing society. Strong attendance has been testimony to the region’s interest.

Outreach programs supplement the basic research done every day at the Cary Institute, where we have recently published papers documenting the importance of watershed inputs to aquatic food webs, the impact of harvesting forest biomass for renewable energy in the Northeast, and the link between Lyme disease risk and the diversity of animal populations. Each of these studies informs policymakers who must decide among difficult and often conflicting alternatives for natural resource management.

Good science should underlie all policy decisions—a point we stressed to Congressman Chris Gibson, who visited the Cary Institute in mid-May.

With your support, we stand ready to provide the best, unbiased science on important environmental issues that face all of us.